Friars honor Pitino’s team, bury Louisville

COLLEGE BASKETBALL: Bryce Cotton and Kadeem Batts each scored 27 points and Providence made Lousiville coach Rick Pitino’s night miserable on a day the school honored his 1987 squad, beating the No. 14 Cardinals 90-59 on Tuesday night.

Louisville (13-4, 1-3) has lost four of its last five. At halftime, Providence held a ceremony, honoring the 25th anniversary of its team that relied on the 3-point shot during a run to the Final Four. The school did it on a night when Pitino was in town, but there was no mention of him when most of the squad was introduced and brought out to center court.

Wallace leads Blazers to another home win

NBA: Gerald Wallace scored 20 points, making a key 3-pointer with 2 minutes left, and the Portland Trail Blazers avenged a loss to the visiting Los Angeles Clippers on New Year’s Day with a 105-97 victory.

LaMarcus Aldridge added 18 points and seven rebounds for the Blazers, who have not lost in six games at home this season.

Raiders GM fires Jackson in first move

NFL: The Oakland Raiders fired coach Hue Jackson after just one season in the first major move since Reggie McKenzie was hired as general manager.

The decision to get rid of Jackson came four days after the team announced the hiring of McKenzie as the team’s first general manager since the death of longtime owner Al Davis in October. After starting the season 7-4, the Raiders lost four of their final five games to mark their ninth straight season without a winning record or a playoff berth.

• Police have recovered the body of Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator Joe Philbin’s son from an icy Wisconsin river and said Tuesday that they were trying to figure out how he died.

Michael T. Philbin, 21, disappeared early Sunday and was reported missing that night. His body was recovered from the Fox River by divers on Monday.

Philbin disappeared after a night out with friends near the University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh campus about 50 miles south of Green Bay. Greuel said no foul play is suspected and investigators were still working to determine if alcohol was a factor.

Four-team playoff under consideration

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Leaders, including Big Ten commissioner and staunch playoff opponent Jim Delany, are open to considering the idea of turning the Bowl Championship Series into a four-team playoff.

The commissioners from the 11 FBS conferences met at a hotel in New Orleans to exchange ideas about what the system for crowning a national champion will be starting in the 2014 season. BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said 50 to 60 possibilities for various changes were presented. He said the process will be deliberate, and he expects it will take between five and seven meetings before July 4 to come to a decision.

One of the ideas is a four-team playoff called a plus-one model that would create two national semifinals and a championship game played a week later.

• Alabama ended up as an overwhelming, though not unanimous, No. 1 in The Associated Press college football poll after shutting out LSU in the BCS championship game.

Five of the 60 members of the AP’s media panel voted otherwise. Four had Oklahoma State (12-1) at No. 1, and Erik Gee of KNML-AM in Albuquerque, N.M., picked LSU – just like he said he would before the game.

• Notre Dame gave coach Brian Kelly a two-year contract extension.

SKIING: Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke was reportedly in a coma after crashing during a training run on the superpipe in Park City, Utah.

The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that the CEO of the Canadian freestyle team, Peter Judge, confirmed Burke was in a coma but didn’t know what that meant for her recovery.

“What I’ve heard, relatively directly, is that she landed a trick down in the bottom end of the pipe, and kind of bounced, from her feet to her head,” Judge told the newspaper. “It wasn’t anything that looked like a catastrophic fall, so I’m a bit mystified.”